


let me uncover the weight of your bones

by pathofcomets



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, WandaVision (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - The Night Circus Fusion, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, Circus, Eastern Europe References because I CAN, F/M, Falling In Love, Family Dynamics, Fortune Telling, Gen, Historical References, Immortality, Inspired by The Night Circus, Internal Conflict, Love, Magic-Users, Magical Realism, Rêveurs (The Night Circus), The Night Circus AU, wordbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:53:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29564994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pathofcomets/pseuds/pathofcomets
Summary: It’s an illusions show, someone in the public explains, before someone else shushes them. The lights die out, in the order they appeared. For five seconds, no one breathes, no one blinks, just waiting for something else to happen. Wanda’s skin crackles with the force of magic in the air.Then the magician appears, slowly: they can first see just his white gloves, the handkerchief tucked in his front pocket, the cut of his black suit. Finally, slowly, the last to appear, is his smile: warm and kind, which makes the children in the audience let out a sound of joy, again. His eyes are, determinedly, focused on Wanda’s.
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	let me uncover the weight of your bones

**Author's Note:**

> I consider myself very galaxy brained for this piece - and it's probably one of the fics closest to my heart, out of all I've ever written. The Night Circus (by Erin Morgenstern) is my favourite book of all time, read and reread over and over again, and I like to believe I've really made that obvious in my piece as well.
> 
> You obviously don't have to have read the book to read this fic, and I hope I provided enough explanations for the fic to flow properly. If you'd like some accompanying music while you read, here's my  Night Circus playlist.

_The circus arrives without warning._

_No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not._

* * *

**1901, Novi Grad**

Wanda Maximoff, gathering her tarot cards for the day, sighs and prepares herself a cup of tea. It’s still early in the evening, early enough that the circus is still stilled, though the town is frantic with its arrival. When _Le cirque de rêves_ is here, all her usual business stills: familiar magic dropped for those few days of dream-like experiences. Wanda can feel what the circus actually is; it thrums at her veins, it blinds her with red at the edge of her vision. Magic, and magic so powerful, so dense, so true that it seems fake for those who have not eyes to see or minds to understand.

It’s scary, Pietro says, and he goes away for however long the circus is around, almost like his powers cannot coexist at the same time as someone else’s, when that someone else is not the person he’s shared a breath with ever since before he was born. Wanda pulls her older deck, the one her mother received on her behalf on their first birthday, a premonition in itself, and starts shuffling it in-between her hands, looking out the window at the descending sun.

One card drops in her lap: _The Tower._

She grabs her red scarf and steps out. It rained the night before, and some of the chill remains in the air, though the sky is clear: the circus will open tonight. The number of visitors for the first night is usually high, and wherever she looks around her, Wanda sees just filled cafes: groups of friends waiting for the last hour to drip by, children dragging parents to hurry along, hats forgotten in adult hands.

Even from this far, she can almost taste the cider on her tongue, a memory so vivid that she knows it’s not just a memory. No, it’s magic at work. And where it’s scaring her brother, because this is unknown, unlike whatever they have going on, it calls to Wanda. She’s one of the fans of this place: she receives letters following the movements of the circus across the globe, and she counts down the days for its arrival. She wears the red that gives her away, she nods her head at others who wear this sign of recognition. Besides that touch against her neck and the red lipstick around her mouth, she’s dressed entirely in black. Blending in is more her purpose, rather than standing out.

At least that is not something new.

The girl at the ticketing booth just waves her in; Wanda recognizes her both from an earlier reading she’s done today, and the last time the circus has been around, and she smiles with gratitude, before stepping inside her favourite place on earth.

She likes that the circus moves; that to be a lover of the circus, the circus has to pick you, has to enter your space, rather than the other way around. She cannot say what is so special about Novi Grad, to have it be one of the places that this magical circus returns to, over and over again, but Wanda is suddenly glad to call it her home. Because for a few days, now, it is a home that she shares with all of _this_.

She takes in a deep breath of air: the smell of popcorn, the light burnt wooden edge from the bonfire, hints of sweetness that she cannot place. She grabs a warm drink for herself, feeling the ground vibrating under her, magic at work at the seams keeping together this entire place. She can only imagine the amount of power it requires to just keep it standing, let alone allow people move from one side to the other, allow outsiders trip and stain and awe at it all.

It was impossible for her not to fall in love with this place. Those five years ago when it first filled the field at the edge of the city, it also filled her mind and heart with the possibility of her powers. She grabs at a twig from one of the bushes painted white: between her fingers, a rose blooms a deep, blood-like red. She waits in front of the living statue for a long time, arm extended towards her, until finally, slowly, each digit opens up and closes around her offering.

At the feet of the performer, in a cursive that almost seems to seep through the material of her podium, _In Memoriam._ There are no names attached to the memory, so Wanda allows herself to place the offering for all of her losses, besides those of the circus’, which she knows nothing about.

On the first night at the circus, she always does this. She thinks of her parents, who never got to see either their children’s powers, or to understand the magic at work here. And then she visits her favourite tents.

She takes off the cap of a scarlet bottle, and in it, she finds stored the smell of Pietro’s hair in the summer, freshly cut grass and sweat and something of her father’s cologne, discontinued several years ago. She inhales, a memory from her childhood, and she wishes she could hide it inside her pocket, have it forever. She knows she could, too, probably without being found out, but somehow it doesn’t feel right to claim as hers something out of this place that belongs to so many others.

She places it, carefully, back on the table. She gets lost in the tent of mirrors, mistaking the corner of a red scarf in a mirror as her own, when it belongs to another _rêveur._ The laugh echoes inside, no outside sound gets in. It takes her a while to find the flap to get out again, and by a bright white light, checking the watch at her wrist, she realizes more than half of the night has already passed.

Time flows differently here. Or rather, time feels different: too full, at any point just a wrong turn away from a discovery that would make it stop altogether.

Wanda takes a left on a path that she knows did not exist here the last time she’s been on circus grounds, and she finds a new tent. Additions are rare, she reads about them in newspapers, deciphering articles painfully slow, with dictionaries strewn across her lap, when she cannot find descriptions in a language that she speaks fluently. Tying together the opening to the tent is a card, on which someone wrote, in beautiful cursive, a performance schedule.

She spends a bit staring at it, memorizing it, for now it’s too late to make it to even the latest performance, and then she prepares to go home.

* * *

The next day, she gets ready even earlier than usual. Sprawled on her table, the tarot cards await her pick. _The Tower,_ again, meets her glare, the crumbling walls a sign of something she cannot recognize. Just yet, she knows, but it’s frustrating how much the anticipation tickles at her senses.

She retraces her steps the night before. She’s the first person who discovers the new tent for the night, and she spends a while walking between the chairs, trying to decide which one would be the perfect seat, when she doesn’t even know what the performance she’s about to see is about. The tent is ( _still_ ) nameless.

Wanda is always courageous by force, strongest when she fears. So she finally sits down in the front row, the chair right in the middle. Inside, it is warm enough that she tugs at her scarf, though she places it across her lap: the circus loves its favourites just as much as the _rêveurs_ love each and every bit of this place.

One by one, the seats get occupied: an excited family to her right, a couple at her left, an elderly woman at her back. Wanda slumps in her chair more, and a kind hand pats her shoulder in thanks, the nail polish a bright red. Wanda smiles.

At that moment exactly, the tent goes dark. Now that she thinks about it, she cannot recall having seen any lanterns or candles inside this place, and the flaps stayed closed unless someone entered or exited the tent. It is almost like nothing but will kept it alight. She has no doubt that’s probably exactly what happened.

One by one, white sparks go off. A childish squeal at the first burst of light, which in the air transforms into flowers and birds, running around the dark sky of the tent. Despite the light of them, Wanda cannot make out the sewing of the tent, or the poles keeping it together, no matter how high the light moves. It’s like they are under the open sky – she has to force herself to keep her hands properly placed in her lap, before she actually tests the reality in front of her.

 _It’s an illusions show_ , someone in the public explains, before someone else shushes them. The lights die out, in the order they appeared. For five seconds, no one breathes, no one blinks, just waiting for something else to happen. Wanda’s skin crackles with the force of magic in the air.

Then the magician appears, slowly: they can first see just his white gloves, the handkerchief tucked in his front pocket, the cut of his black suit. Finally, slowly, the last to appear, is his smile: warm and kind, which makes the children in the audience let out a sound of joy, again. His eyes are, determinedly, focused on Wanda’s.

And only then, the show truly begins. The best magic shows are those that are magic, but convince the audience that are just smart tricks. The man in front of them passes through objects, allows a flutter of white doves fly right through his body. He picks up items that should not have budged against the strength of ten men. He _flies._

Wanda counts each trick, attributes it a name, tries to find a pattern. When the show ends, she doesn’t budge from her seat, and the room slowly fills with a new round of patrons, for a second time that night. She sits through each performance; much later into the night, the tent flap closes behind the last other person inside, with a finality she knows means it’s over.

Anxious, she plays with her scarf, counting in her head. She gets to 100, exactly.

“Hello,” a voice says from behind her, but Wanda doesn’t startle, doesn’t even turn around.

The man chuckles, pleased and she cannot even guess why. His voice suits him, even more so when he steps around her chair, keeping a proper distance from her, a smile at his lips. It’s different from his expression while he performs: this time softer, the lines more defined around his mouth and eyes, and Wanda cannot look away from him. He’s doing the same, measuring her with his gaze, figuring her out.

“Did you enjoy the tricks?” he asks.

“They’re not tricks,” she says, and her tone leaves him no space to contest her words.

However, he doesn’t look angry. If surprised, as well, he doesn’t show it. She’s suddenly embarrassed by her words, by her fervent devotion to his shows, by what she can, now, awkwardness and disappointment flushing cold through her bones, only call a mistake.

“Look again,” is all he answers her.

Wanda sits up, sudden enough that her scarf drops to her chair, forgotten behind in her haste to get away. The illusionist picks it up, carefully placing it on the back of the chair, saving a seat that he’s not sure will be occupied the next evening.

And he turns and leaves as well, the night late, their patrons only the most devoted. He remembers her scarf, her red hair as well – and he smiles, picking a bag of chocolate mice for Morgan.

* * *

The next couple of days, the chair remains empty throughout all of his performances, just the red scarf, a flag of defeat. Tony tells them their next destination, and while no patron would be able to tell by the usual bustling of the circus, this is the last night in Novi Grad. When the illusionist finally reveals himself to the public, a face that he’s been searching for all along is there welcoming him.

The papers will write a dashing review of his performance that evening, in French, German and Japanese. The man to whom the tent belongs to will be known as Illusion, and his playground, simply, the Illusionist’s tent.

Wanda learns he goes by Vision, for those in the circus.

Vision does not say goodbye.

The circus never needs it.

* * *

_"Rêveurs" are members of the unofficial fan club for The Night Circus. They are extremely devoted to all aspects of the circus. Rêveurs distinguish themselves from everyone else due to their uniform: all black or white clothing, with a single red accent (such as a scarf)._

* * *

**1905, Novi Grad**

Wanda gathers her tarot cards, the last of her clients gone for the day. Pietro, who never bothers her whenever she’s working, appears at her side, startling her when she turns around to grab something to, finally, eat. She had an elder woman as a client who told her, once, that people prefer their fortune tellers to look a bit sickly, so she amps herself up on caffeine only, forcing the shaking of her hands, and leaves her first meal to late in the afternoon.

Her brother waves a stack of letters and envelopes in the air, going through each of them, reading her name in voices that he thinks fit the handwriting font. One of the envelopes is6 black. From above the papers, Pietro raises an eyebrow at her.

Wanda lunges herself across the space separating them, grabbing everything from his hands.

“None of yours, correct?” she asks, and at his nod, she disappears in her room.

Pietro cooks her meal for her, and when he knocks at her door, she’s already wearing ink stains, writing replies. He recognizes which one she’s opened first, because the paper inside the black envelope is equally as dark, the ink rather a bone-like white. Only the signature is red, but from where he stands, he cannot make it out, without obviously making it clear to Wanda that he’s trying to read her correspondence. He catches a looped _S_ , the cut of a _V_.

“Wanda?”

“Hm?”

“You know what you’re doing?”

At this, she raises her gaze to her twin, the man she’s keeping out of the loop because she does not want to hurt him. She’s reading at his frown, how deep his worry actually is. And with just one word, she has the power to silence him forever on this topic, because he trusts her enough to make her own choices, even if he does not necessarily agree.

“Yes.”

Vision calls her his favourite audience, because he doesn’t have to convince her of anything: neither that the show is real, neither that he is faking it all.

Wanda draws her own conclusions. Wanda has her own convictions.

* * *

**1908, Budapest**

“Only you could have managed to give anxiety to a robot,” Pepper jokes, patting Vision’s shoulder as she passes him by.

Tony chuckles, from where he’s matching dotted stockings to a black, puffy skirt. They’re waiting, all in Morgan’s pink room, for her to try out her circus outfits: she wants to blend in with the special patrons, and so her outfit shall be the typical monochrome, with the touch of red. She has a heart shaped purse put aside especially for it, a birthday present from Peter, the trapeze. Vision is the only one that, all the time, has been pacing around, like a caged lion, waiting for the hours to pass, to opening night.

“He is technically not a robot,” Tony mumbles, and Morgan erupts from her closet, all black ribbons and white frills.

She twirls straight into Vision’s arms, who catches her with ease, picking her up over his shoulders.

“He’s the Illusionist,” she says, prolonging her vowels, a bit of awe in her voice.

Well, now he knows which is Morgan’s favourite tent.

“Does this have anything to do with your mysterious letters?” Pepper asks, innocent enough that if both men want to ignore her question, they can choose to.

“Are they that mysterious if we all know about them?” Tony snorts.

Vision’s ears turn red under their teasing. While Tony helps Morgan out of a jacket with too many buttons, Pepper softly takes him to the side.

“Is she that important, that you can’t even relax before your own performance?”

“No,” Vision pauses, taking in the chuckle of a father, the warmth of this room so filled with love. “Not yet.”

* * *

**1913, New York**

“All I’m saying is, it’s just a bit creepy when you do…” Wanda waves her hands in the air, pointing at the wall of a tent that has been separating her from an alley, their decided meeting point for the night, through which Vision just walked through “that.”

He fumbles with his words, something that she’s beginning to find extremely cute.

“You were here, so I just assumed-”

“Well,” she laughs, pointing her popcorn bag at him, inviting him to grab some. “I’d normally hear people approaching and know they’re coming. You’re just… there.”

“Magic,” Vision says, a pleased twinkle in his eyes.

Wanda’s nose scrunches in delight. He offers her his arm, and she leans against his body gracefully. She is not one of his daily audience members anymore, his shows now learnt by heart: she can tell which part comes next by the way his magic shifts around her, so familiar she is to the push and pull of it. Instead, she explores the circus, and once his performances are over, they meet to do so together.

It’s the third time she’s followed the circus in another parts of the world. The others have still been in Europe, close enough to her hometown that her brother saw nothing wrong with allowing her to travel. This time around, she’s in New York with Pietro, chasing ghosts or running away for long enough to become ghosts themselves. Vision, the gentleman that he is, does not ask about her circumstances, and just enjoys her company, because it’s rare enough as it is.

Her accent is fainter now, growing fainter still.

When they walk like this, no one recognizes Vision, no one bothers the Illusionist, even as his tent has become one of the most sought after, both in popular knowledge, and the more elitist circles of the _rêveurs_. When they walk like this, the only people stopping them, or bumping them in one direction or another, hunting a particular attraction or discovering a new corner of the circus, an untaken path, are other people in the circus.

Tonight, however, he’s taking the lead. By the stalls where the famous circus treats are sold, Wanda finally notices that something new has been added to this selection as well. The smell is so familiar that it makes her mouth water, and she turns not towards where the traditional street snack of her home is being sold, but to Vision.

“Is this-”

He smiles, shrugging one of his shoulders, as if to shake off any of the credit that she so desperately wants to give to his kindness.

“Yes.”

She grabs his hand in hers, squeezing once, in thanks. It’s all he needs. She doesn’t let go of his hand, even as she struggles eating the sweet dough, sticky on her fingers, with just one hand.

“No one dislikes you, Wanda.”

She pops another bite in her mouth, pausing to consider his words, knowing that they’re not entirely true, knowing that, however, he believes them so.

“Thank you.”

* * *

Wanda loves the circus like she doesn’t love many other things. Its people, however, with one exception, she holds quite complicated feelings towards. People whose trust she still has to gain, because just as she can feel Vision, there are a few people who can feel her, and enough who don’t like her simply because she got his time, she got similar enough powers.

She never showed those to anyone. Not by her own volition, though.

In her hometown of Novi Grad, a news has run just several months before, of a witch who blew up an entire building. She was trying to save people, but it’s not like she got the chance to tell her own version of the story.

In a place that circles the globe, they catch up with things, eventually.

* * *

**1914, Chicago**

Vision tightens his hold against her coat.

“Maybe it’s better if you just stay here.”

Wanda wants to weep.

“I can take care of myself,” she says, and Vision’s thumb rubs soothing circles against her arm.

Panic flares behind her eyes. She wonders how long it’d take Pietro to get to her, if something were to happen.

“It’s not your safety that we are worried about,” he adds, this time softer, searching her face for a sign that she might understand where he is coming from.

But she does not. To her, it is obviously clear that however Vision reached this conclusion, he didn’t take anything that he knows of her into account. Or maybe she knows him – and he knows her – way less than they wanted to pretend they did.

When Wanda uses _we_ , she means her and her other half, her twin. When Vision uses _we_ , he means at least a hundred other persons.

There are still people around her, so he’s constraining her in more ways than he wants to admit. She starts walking again, Vision’s arm still linked with hers. They step on battered paths, by tents both old and new, known and still fresh, and Wanda doesn’t stop for any of them, watching where she goes, but not truly seeing. With each turn, as the silence stretches between them, Vision’s expression becomes more and more pained.

Wanda leans closer to him, checking the time. They’re at a corner of the circus grounds, where the colours are more vibrant, the black-and-white monochrome of the place not quite as strong. It’s 5 in the morning, late enough that even the most devoted have retired for the night.

She tugs her arm free, this time Vision lets her.

“Wanda, if you do this, they’ll never stop being afraid of you.”

He searches her face, hoping that his words will echo somewhere in her heart. For the first time in over a decade, she is scared of this place, understands her brother’s reluctance. She steadies herself on her feet.

“I cannot control their fear, only my own.”

In the monochrome world of the circus, for just a second, a corner flashes red.

* * *

For four years, the circus does not travel. No one knows where it is weathering down the war, and no one has the time to consider such trivialities. The place with no home remains unmapped.

It takes the Maximoff twins three more years to find the courage to return home. When the circus arrives, Wanda does not go. Pietro sits in an armchair, following his sister with his eyes, as she walks in circles around their small apartment, a miniature mimicry of the circus layout. What she wants to purge from her mind, her body remembers.

“Wanda?”

“Hm?”

“What _truly_ happened?”

And she tells him, because she has no one else.

* * *

**1922, Novi Grad**

The curtain to her reading room parts, and Wanda almost flies the man to the other side of the building. It takes his own magic, pulsing bright and strong, to keep her on her seat.

Tony Stark just sits on the chair across her, his hand palm up on the table.

“So? Read my future.”

She crosses her arms at her chest. Her eyes turn red, but he just waits. Eventually, she points to the tarot deck; he either misunderstood her trade or is mocking her for it. Either way, she wants him out and out fast. 

“Wanda,” he sighs, and she bristles at the fact that he knows her name, dares say it with so much familiarity. “I think you hurt Vision’s feelings.”

“You tried to keep me in the circus.”

“I did that to protect you.”

This time, she does fly the man to the other side of the building.

* * *

**1923, Bucharest**

Wanda crosses the street, pulling the hat more determinedly over her head, the rain intensifying further. The restaurant where she is supposed to meet with Clint is actually filled with members of the circus enjoying a day off, rainy days the only ones where the circus remains definitely closed. It’s the first time they came to this country, and Wanda thought herself safe enough, until four days into her trip, the circus arrived without warning.

She stopped tracking it. While dedicated reveurs are still sending her letters, now that the circus and its magic returned, and newspapers are picking up again at its wonders, she is dedicatedly tuning it out.

She enters the restaurant, hovers by its door. She does not dare use her magic, even as it would help make her less noticeable, and she tries to explain to a waiter what her partner is supposed to look like, to send him a message, the place of meeting changed. The waiter twists his nose, obviously displeased that he is about to lose business because of her –

But he nods his head. Wanda twists on her feet, pushing at the heavy door, preparing to face the rain and the wind again. On the cobbled stone, she walks slowly, afraid her heels would slip on the wet pavement, and for someone determined, it’d take nothing at all to catch up with her.

The rain, merciless against her skin, stops. She does too, stilled on the spot, looking up at the margin of a black umbrella, frowning. She drags her coat closer to her body, looks in the other direction, refusing to acknowledge the person standing next to her. She doesn’t sketch even the intent of a run.

Caught, again. On the boulevard, they’re the only people out.

“Wanda,” he says.

“Vis,” she replies, and something in her twists with the familiarity of the nickname.

His expression breaks, a downward pull at the corner of his mouth, like it pains him to hear her voice after all this time. It’s the truth; it’s been eight years since she’s rendered him immobile inside his own playground, and he realized he’s nothing when placed next to this woman. He’s spent many days reading over their letters, bottling his memories of her, hoping she’d show up again for one of his performances, like something hasn’t broken between them.

A foolish wish, he knows now. And he has learned human hearts cannot be put back together as easily as a chipped porcelain tea cup. But he has learned that mechanical hearts can start beating.

He offers her his arm, a mimicry of their familial walks, on the other side of the world. She takes it, but this time it is her moving him through poor lit alleys and streets whose names he forgets as soon as he catches.

“What do you want?” she asks, but her tone does not sound unkind, just defeated.

“I’m sorry.”

She looks at him for the first time since they met, gauging his sincerity, having forgotten how to read him without first searching. Besides the different cut of his hair, Vision looks just like all those years ago, when he first held her gaze on a podium, and she realized she cannot look away anymore.

“Me too,” she breathes.

Vision, finally, smiles. She stops in front of a corner coffee shop, cosy shelter far away from the popular roads. He presses the handle of the umbrella in her hands, delicately straightening the hat on top of her head. Wanda, finally, smiles.

* * *

**1923, Prague**

“Pietro,” she whispers out in the dark, holding her breath to hear him shuffling in the bed.

After so long, she can almost feel him opening his eyes, squinting at her form, illuminated from behind by the kitchen light.

“What?” his voice is hoarse, but he raises in the bed, pats down the mattress so she can join him.

Her feet are cold from the floor, and so she hurries by his side, stealing his blanket and draping it over her shoulder, offering the other corner to him. Pietro drags it over their heads, even as he ends up with an elbow in his ribs, and her indignation at disregarding her hair altogether.

He grunts, and then waits in silence for Wanda to say whatever she came here to tell him. Because his sister would not wake him up in the middle of the night for anything but the extremely important. He can almost feel her thinking, biting at her lips anxiously, searching for the proper words.

“They,” she starts, and he almost jerks away from whatever she wants to tell him. “do not age either.”

He sputters, lost at words, shocked at the revelation.

“Pietro,” she tries again, this time looking at him, her eyes red, though he knows she’s not actually using her powers on him, just proving her point. “They’re just like us. Or we’re just like them, but it’s been over twenty years, and nothing… no one changed.”

One of his arms come, soothingly, around her back, dragging her closer into a hug. Because while Pietro simply embraced their powers for what they were, a twist of bad luck in their orphaned life, Wanda has been trying to make peace with her own, get to the reason behind the _whys_ and _hows._ If this is what she wants, if this is what she needs, how can he deny her?

* * *

The cards do not speak to Pietro like they do for his sister, he has not the skill to bend them to a stranger’s destiny. And yet, he is the only other person allowed to touch her old deck. And yet, a bit of her lives in him, anyway.

Pietro thinks of his sister, a red spot on the history of The Night Circus, and draws a card.

_The Lovers._

He tries several times more, and always, the same card. He swears, careful to put the tarot deck back in its place, even if Wanda will know immediately that someone else’s magic has touched them, when she’ll retrieve them again. For a bit longer, he can pretend.

For a bit longer, he can think about what he can do.

* * *

**1927, Athens**

Pietro doesn’t want to be here, everything in him tells him to run, as fast as he can – which in his case, is so fast that he’d be back in this exact spot in the blink of an eye. But by his side, his twin stands, serene, waiting for the lights curling in the name of the circus to light up, announcing its opening. It’s the first time she is to step foot inside the circus again, in over ten years, and her face holds just the pure anticipation of a child waiting for magic to happen.

She holds his hand when they pay their entrance fee, when they cross the border to this world. She’s not wearing her typical outfit, and neither is he; for the first time, they’re two stains of colour on the monochromatic background of the circus. Wanda, in a red sundress, and him in a blue shirt. It’s a transgression matching the bloom of their powers, and he knows the choices, even if not thought over, have been intentional. This time around, it’s not Wanda trying to fit in, but Maximoffs letting everyone know who they are, how they are.

When Wanda uses her powers here, Pietro can basically feel it, so much powerful is the magical thrum of the circus. The red rose in her hand is simply there, when before it was not, and she stops in front of a living statue, set in the form of a weeping angel, painted entirely in white.

“You have to,” she says, and offers her rose to Pietro, who looks doubtfully at the object, at the performer, still unmoving, and then at his sister.

“Why?”

“Tradition.”

She points with the tip of her boots towards the inscription, now even more faded than she remembers it. In the memory of who, the eternal question, now more and more harder to even find. The statue smiles, though it takes her a minute to get it to its full power, and Wanda bows in front of her, allowing her brother to learn the first lesson of this place: patience.

“Find me,” she says instead of a goodbye, and Pietro is left staring after her, determined step, hair flaring at her back, his light.

Looks like she didn’t need him, after all. He returns to the statue, watching each muscle relaxing and tensing, as almost imperceptibly, the angel rises to its full height, meeting his stance, accepting his offering.

Even after all this time, she can still remember exactly where their meeting point is. She passes a few changes: tents taken out, tents added in – and she feels the familiar curiosity, of wanting to try out each and every one of them. Wanda turns around the corner and there he is.

“This is new,” Vision says, looking at her from head to toes, and Wanda smiles, pleased.

“Bad new or good new?”

“Just new. It suits you.”

She nods her head at him, accepting his compliment. “I know.”

* * *

Wanda opens her palm up, waiting for her brother to drop something – whatever he has stolen, in her waiting hand. When he doesn’t, she slaps his arm, with enough strength that he winces.

“You are going to get killed if you keep stealing things.”

“You know, I’m 12 minutes older than you.”

“Pietro,” she warns, and then finally, he passes over to her a white hair ribbon.

She raises an eyebrow at him. Next to that, he places an almost transparent bottle, and her expression softens.

“What does it smell like?”

Pietro sighs when Wanda leaves the items behind at the ticket booth.

“Freshly washed bedsheets in winter, when we used to share the same bed as kids.”

She takes his hand in hers, and they step out.

* * *

**1931, Paris**

He has not sent a proper address, because the house and the room are hidden anyway, untraceable to most people. Instead, on the black card that Wanda discovers, in-between the tarot deck that she uses to practice her fortune-telling, there’s just a dusting of magic that, if she wants to, can lead her back to him.

Vision opens the door at the first knock against the wood, startling her. Her cheeks are flushed with the effort and the hurry, her lips a lovely red. He wants to lean closer, press his mouth against hers, but what he does instead is to help her out of her coat, careful so that her hair does not knot in the buttons.

“So you’re here for a while?” she asks, accepting the cup of mulled wine that he presses against her frozen digits.

“At least a month. People are getting burnt out, and a break to let everyone do whatever they want seemed like a good idea.”

“Is it not?”

“I'm grateful for it,” he adds, and he’s not looking around at his apartment, or out the window at a crowded Parisian street, but at her, here in a space that he calls his home.

Wanda moves around an armchair, looking through his bookshelf: volumes in at least seven languages, spanning from history to physics. Her fingertips rest against the leather spines, parts of Vision’s inner world visible.

“What is your favourite?” she asks.

“Guess.”

Her hand colours red as she’s trying to find her answer with magic. Out from the shelf, a particular volume flies out, hovering in the air between them. She catches it, turning around so she can read the title.

“Shakespeare’s sonnets? Vision, you’re a romantic!”

He laughs, delighted, and Vision discovers that he doesn’t really mind the teasing if it comes from her. He comes closer to her, picking up the volume, turning its pages until he finds a dog-eared marking, clearing his throat.

He’s blushing even before he starts reading, but his voice remains clear.

“ _All days are nights to see till I see thee, / And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me._ ”

She’s looking at him, transfixed, something in his words that is more than just a simple repetition of his favourite lines.

“Wanda… I’m going to kiss you, okay?”

“Okay.”

And so he does, just a soft press of his lips against hers. Wanda places her mug on his shelves, ignoring the start of his indignation, and she pulls at the collar of his shirt, dragging him closer to her, her mouth finding his.

* * *

**1938, Novi Grad**

“Can you,” Wanda struggles to shove at Pietro’s shoulder, forcing him inside the tiny booth of the café. “calm down?”

The rain keeps falling, so violent that it almost drowns the sound of the piano player tuning their instrument. Pietro looks around the place: recognizes a few people from the city, though most of them are visitors, here for the circus, here from the circus. He frowns, grumbling his order of hot chocolate.

“Are you sure he will show up?”

Wanda places her leather gloves on the table, shuffling out of her coat. Her hair dries in a second, when none of the patrons besides her twin are even paying attention to her. Pietro is rather intent on glaring holes in her, waiting for a reply that will satisfy him, though there’s no satisfying him at this point.

“Of course,” she says, and her brother looks outside the window, where the rain forms a curtain he cannot see through, and then back to his sister.

She doesn’t seem to be anxious at all, despite the terrible weather outside, which would have kept even the more devoted lover inside. They’re lucky enough to have gotten here right before the brunt of the rain started falling. He cannot say the same of Wanda’s mysterious man. His sister, however, is patiently stirring in her own cup of hot chocolate, stealing scoops of whipped cream as she patiently waits. The tower of cream never gets smaller, and Pietro pushes his own mug closer to her, so she can do the same thing to his own drink.

She sticks her tongue out at him; his mug fills up again with whipped cream anyway. He smiles at her.

Vision indeed shows up – actually exactly on time, since the twins were early just because of the bad weather. He slips in the booth next to Wanda, and the only tender gesture that passes between them hinting at the blooming of a relationship is the three second grasp of his fingers around her hand.

Oh, and the fact that his sister immediately lights up.

Pietro knows, five seconds into meeting Vision, that he’s good for his sister – maybe even better than good. He enjoys his night, however, torturing him with questions, surviving all of Wanda’s kicks that she delivers under the table.

* * *

**1946, Novi Grad**

The Maximoffs survive bombings and pretend it doesn’t bring back the worst of the memories, that the shacking of their bodies, long after the sounds died out, is not really there. And it’s stupid, because they survive so much worse, so why is Pietro gone, by foolish misstep?

He saves a child, running as fast as he can, to place himself between a young body and bullets. His softest spot, because Pietro could never let go of that day when they were 10, and he has been forever a child at heart since then. He fails to consider he leaves his twin behind.

For three days, Wanda locks herself in the bathroom, because it’s windowless, and allows the room to bleed in red, allows herself to scream until her throat goes raw, iron taste on her tongue. On the fourth day, she buries Pietro.

Just because he died heroically, it doesn’t make it any less real that he is no longer. Just because he died heroically, it doesn’t mean that her pain is dulled.

“How?” she asks, but no one can give her a satisfactory answer.

She has not been there to witness it, she just felt him go down, felt the life pour out of his body.

They’re not supposed to die so easily. He’s not supposed to be dead, leaving her behind. There are not many people in attendance for the funeral to begin with, half a century placing her brother all across the map of the world. A few of them are members of the circus, a few old friends, some elders that have known them since birth. Wanda remains, rooted on the spot, long before everyone else has left. Vision, by her side, holds an umbrella above her head and hands her his handkerchief. She will not return it; at her touch, the material turns red. Her magic is erratic, barely contained.

It rains the entire day. Wanda tells Vision to go away, let her be, because she doesn’t know how the magic will lash out, in her state.

The rain continues throughout the night, and Vision stays.

* * *

**1953, Edinburgh**

Wanda’s stopped by a gentleman wearing a fake, red rose at his chest, who introduces himself as one of the foreign newspaper columnists whose paper she kept ordering, ages ago, though he is old enough to have passed over his business to his daughter. He recognizes her by the red of her hat, a habit that has died down with the years of hiatus, but that veterans still know about.

“Did your mother taught you about that?”

Wanda doesn’t think she looks really that young, but takes the compliment gracefully. They make a detour by the Ice Garden, his own personal favourite. When he asks her which tent is her favourite, she lies. When they end up by the bottled emotions, she can taste the Kürtőskalács on her tongue, and hear Vision’s laugh. She closes her eyes, pained with the vividness of it, the stretch of time between then and now.

She sits for Vision’s last performance, next to the gentleman. At the end of it, he kisses the back of her hand and thanks her for the company. Wanda doesn’t budge from her seat.

“Hello,” Vision says, an echo of times past.

This time around, she rises to meet him in a kiss, in an embrace. Vision’s hand is tender, brushing her hair away from her face. He helps her up on the stage, just slightly elevated, and he takes her usual audience seat. It didn’t feel like it when she was the one sitting down, but the distance is almost non-existent.

She reaches out with her arm, and Vision meets her halfway.

“Wanda, I’ll speak for myself but I think this,” and he pauses, to look at the place where their hands are linked, “t-this works.”

“It does,” she answers, nodding, her expression softening when she meets his eyes.

“What if we both just – just lost our trains, the next ones, and all those that follow?”

My powers do not dazzle,” she whispers, and her hand drops from where she is holding on to his.

Vision grabs it back, lifting it to his lips, kissing each finger one by one, finishing with a soft, long press of his mouth against her open palm.

“Stay not with the circus, but with me. Wherever you want.”

And suddenly they’re not inside the circus anymore, but rather Vision’s apartment, as she has first known it, back when they became lovers: the books, the soft sheets, the smell of old paper and sweet morning breakfast.

“Wanda,” he says, almost reverently.

“I’m tired of running, Vis. I can’t run without him.”

“Then stay. With me.”

He comes closer, still, resting his forehead against hers. The illusion disappears from around them and they’re again in his tent, on his scene. And they both know it’s for a last time.

**Author's Note:**

> Does a fanfiction need plot, is it not enough to be just immaculate vibes and flowery writing?  
> Thank you for reading!  
> I also have [a twitter](https://twitter.com/pathofcomets) where where you can reach me, and where I rant about the whole writing process, post snippets from time to time and you can see what else I work on!


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